We are preparing to make a surprise trip to the hospital!
That means you should be preparing to do some surprise babysitting!
More later.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Caring for Your Introvert
I found this article amusing, but it probably comes across as combative and haughty. Still, there's good information in there.
Journal Entry: September 16, 2009
I tipped my hand a little bit, with yesterday's blog posts, but I wanted to get the information out. But, yeah, I had a late start on the day, came to work for a few hours, then headed to OC to teach my class. I decided to skip lunch (because I never have any appetite for hours leading up to my class), but then I got to Edmond too early so I stopped at Taco Bell for a quesadilla. How offensive could a quesadilla be?
I never got to find out. The kind folks at Taco Bell resolved my excess time problem by backing up the drive-through line long enough that I eventually bailed and headed to school, entirely unfooded.
Then, as I said yesterday, class went really well. My activity was awesome, and the students expressed that. Yay.
And after class, for the first time, I actually returned to work. I did debate whether I was actually up to it because even after a successful class I still have to deal with the physiological crash that follows any high stress episode. But, y'know, after both of my last two classes (which both left me crashing hard), T-- had me babysit AB while she went grocery shopping. And I survived that somehow. Going back to work, by comparison, was restful.
So I put in a few more hours, got home around six, and T-- made us street tacos using some of the brisket. They were incredible. Such a good dinner. I want more.
Then after that I got my laptop, sat on the couch, and played WoW. It was a good night.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
I never got to find out. The kind folks at Taco Bell resolved my excess time problem by backing up the drive-through line long enough that I eventually bailed and headed to school, entirely unfooded.
Then, as I said yesterday, class went really well. My activity was awesome, and the students expressed that. Yay.
And after class, for the first time, I actually returned to work. I did debate whether I was actually up to it because even after a successful class I still have to deal with the physiological crash that follows any high stress episode. But, y'know, after both of my last two classes (which both left me crashing hard), T-- had me babysit AB while she went grocery shopping. And I survived that somehow. Going back to work, by comparison, was restful.
So I put in a few more hours, got home around six, and T-- made us street tacos using some of the brisket. They were incredible. Such a good dinner. I want more.
Then after that I got my laptop, sat on the couch, and played WoW. It was a good night.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
A Present for the Baby
In case you weren't able to make it to the baby shower, or just want to get something nice for little Alexander, I recommend picking up this.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The OC (Week 3)
This post is part of an ongoing series.
Video Lectures
I got to class about ten minutes early today, and spent that time setting up my laptop while the students filed in. I turned on the projector and got it ready to go, but I didn't hook anything up yet because I didn't want the distraction.
While I was getting that ready, though, one of my students spoke up from the back of the room and said, "Oh, hey, I tried to watch your video lecture online, but it wouldn't work on my computer." It's a class full of Computer Science and Information Science majors, so of course suggestions were offered back and forth, but in the end I told him I'd been having trouble with it, too, so I'd keep looking into it and get back to him.
He said, "Well, anyway, it's a good thing you also provided the written transcript. Keep doing that. Because that was really helpful."
And I said, "Umm...I'm a Technical Writer. That's my job. So, yes, I will."
Opening Questions
Five minutes later I had all the students I was going to have (two shy of a full roster), so I turned to my outline. The first item on it was, "Video lecture vs. written tutorial." Half of the class had already heard the conversation, but I went ahead and revisited it, bringing the other half in. Turned out only two or three students had tried to use the video lecture, and only one of them had gotten it to work (and that one happens to work for the North Institute which is the non-profit group that designed and maintains the software all the rest of us are having trouble with). I promised the students I'd keep working on it, and let them know what I learned, and reiterated that the text tutorials will be available, and will be higher quality than my narrated slideshows anyway.
Partway through that, my helpful inside man piped up to tell me how to workaround the problems the others were having, and I made notes to myself to send out more detailed, step-by-step instructions later in the week. So my video lectures problem might be solved. We'll see.
Syllabus Issues
I moved on from there to a discussion of the syllabus, which I opened up on the projector. We'd gone over it on the first day, briefly, but when we talked last week about due dates, I realized it was completely messed up. So I told them the new dates were available on the version of the syllabus online (and went over them in class).
I'd also forgotten to give them Fall Break -- a fact which came to my attention while rearranging due dates, so I told them, "Oh. I've also graciously decided to let you to take Fall Break along with your fellow students." That got a bigger laugh than it probably deserved, and then spawned some contention over one of the new due dates falling on Fall Break. Apparently they're not happy with just getting out of a lecture and assignment. I told them I'd consider the issue and render my verdict next week.
Stand-up
One unexpected development in today's class is that I stood up for most of my lecture(s). I'd decided after my first week that standing in front of the class was causing me anxiety issues (and then later Dad explained to me what was really causing it, but I didn't think to correct my earlier assumption). Anyway, after that I decided to just sit at the teacher's desk -- front and center in the class -- and deliver my lectures on eye-level with all my students.
Today, though, I was using my laptop on the overhead projector, which means I had to set it on the raised lectern off to the side, and I had to stand behind it to control the screen. I had been doing that while we discussed the syllabus -- effectively hiding behind my laptop, which is precisely how I handle the anxiety at most family functions -- but when I moved on to the mini-lecture I didn't have any overhead material to back it up (at first).
So, without thinking about it, I stepped away from the computer, halfway between the lectern and my desk, and started talking to my students. It didn't make sense to cross all the way to my desk, sit down and talk to them, just to jump up again two bullet points down so I could bring up my illustrations.
About midway between the first and second bullet point I noticed that I was standing up and lecturing, but I didn't let myself dwell on it. When it came time for the big ugly main lecture at the end of the class period, though, I did the same thing deliberately, and I had no trouble with it. At least, not with the standing up part.
The Mini-Lecture
As I may have mentioned before, the course consists of Tuesday lectures on Topics in Tech Writing, and then Thursday tutorials and assignments that require the students to prepare specific document types (business letter, memo, resume, that sort of thing).
So today I brought that up -- brought up that we'd been talking for two weeks about "document types," and I said the reason that matters is because certain document types have an impact just by being that document type. In fact, I'd hinted at that in the tutorials for each of the documents types they'd done so far. Formatting a business communique as a recognizable Business Letter creates a certain expectation and context for your reader, before you ever convey the first word of your content. The same goes for a memo. I told them a good way to think of document types is by their "shape" -- that is, the visual impact of a document that matches a particular style, and the response that style creates in a reader.
Haiku?
By way of illustration, I put some words up on the projector. It was a text document, in Notepad, so there was no formatting whatsoever. I'd even reduced everything to lower-case, at great personal pain. The first document looked like this:
One of my Computer Science majors said, "A haiku?" I almost laughed at that. I'd actually had, "Gibberish? A poem?" in my own notes for possible student guesses.
I just said, "What about this?" and opened the second document.
Somebody said, "An advertisement, maybe?" I heard whispery voices treading dangerously close to the right guess, so I went ahead and put up the third document.
"So," I said, "what you can see here is that the words that go on a band flyer are totally meaningless until you put them in the shape of a band flyer." And I hesitated for a beat, and smiled, and said, "So you're going to put them in the shape of band flyer."
The Band Flyer
I told them to divide into three groups -- that I wasn't playing the elementary school counting game this week -- and none of them apparently learned from that last week because they opted to just stay divided up by their tables. So group one consisted of three English majors and a couple technical people, and then groups two and three were entirely technical people. It was incredibly lopsided, but it made for good teaching in the end.
I told them they could probably find the original flyer if they looked hard enough online, but that I didn't want them to recreate the original. I wanted them to make their own. Each group quickly picked which software they were going to use to design the document (Picnic, Paint, and Word, respectively), and then selected one designer to actually build it.
Groups two and three mostly left their designers to do the design work single-handedly, while they went searching online -- first for suitable background art, and then (out of sheer, perverse curiosity) for sordid details about the band Eyes Like Headlights (which, in case you're curious, is one of Carlos's old bands).
Time Management
I probably should have obfuscated my information before presenting it to the students. Some of the antics and lyrics associated with Eyes Like Headlights probably isn't something I should be sharing with my students -- at least from the Dean of Students's point of view. They certainly didn't mind. They found it hilarious.
I gave them twenty minutes, and group two dashed something off in Paint and were done in fifteen minutes (and that was just the designer -- most of the rest of his group had tuned out around seven to eight minutes in, when they were confident in his work). Group three's designer had a little more artistic input, and they took right up until the twenty-minute mark to submit their design. Group one, which boasted fully four designers overflowing with artistic vision, took most of thirty minutes to get their document submitted.
Sometime around minute twenty-seven, one of the girls looked up and said, "Wait, what kind of band are they?"
Everyone else already knew, because they'd been listening to tracks on myspace, but I looked at my cherished English major and said, "They're progressive death metal."
Her eyes shot wide, and she said, "Umm...well, we're pretending that they're Folk, for ours. Okay?"
Presentation and Discussion
So we finally got all three flyers in, and I put them up on the projector in order. Everyone was really impressed with group one's heavily designed document, and no amount of prompting could get them to express what was wrong with it (apart from a couple elements that they'd forgotten). I had to point out that they got the band wrong. That, while they'd been determinedly working on the good design, good layout, good formatting that group two had just casually dashed off, group two had actually (goofing off) figured out what style the document should be. That's research, and that's a real, important part of Technical Writing.
Of course, the other groups caught on that group one's flyer was beautifully designed. Ultimately, we decided group three had the best one for the band in question.
Object Lesson
One of the best lessons learned, though, came from a specific mistake the hasty group two had made. One of the lines on the poster, "with left on northwood and rettig," referred to a couple other bands that were performing at the same show. Group two mistook that "left on northwood" bit as directions, and threw that line in the upper left corner with the address and the name of the venue. Same font, same style, and as soon as I put the flyer up on the overhead, someone from group three pointed out their mistake.
Honestly, when we got into the discussion stage, the designer for group two started looking a little sheepish, and I felt a little bad about that. Then we finished up the discussion and I launched into my big ugly lecture, where I was just trying to dump specific formatting rules on them.
One of the first points I made was that technical documents generally contain several discrete chunks of information, bundled together, and part of the purpose of formatting is to create a recognizable hierarchy to help readers quickly and accurately figure out which information belongs to which bundle, and to locate the bundle the reader actually needs.
And I'd said some words on the topic, then I pulled that group two flyer back up, and darted over to the screen, and said, "That's what we saw right here. That's what the flyers do, grouping all these individual sentences into sections, formatting them to show what is related, and how. And we saw that on this flyer. We all knew instantly that group two had gotten this wrong -- had mistaken these two other bands for driving directions -- because of nothing but the font and the position on the page. He grouped this line with these other lines, and that told us what he thought it meant."
That was an excellent object lesson, that I could never have made up on my own. Even more importantly, though, the guy who had designed that document, who had been looking sheepish through all the ribbing over it, was nodding right along to my point. He got it, and that was awesome.
The Big Ugly Lecture
Dad told me not to do lectures -- to focus on mini-lectures instead -- and Gail said I'd done really well in the first week to focus on stories because students really connect to stories (and that's great news, because I'm naturally a storyteller).
But in today's class I needed to do an infodump. I needed to deliver certain rules, certain information, for them to use in all future classes. So after we'd finished our discussion of the class activity (which, I think, they really enjoyed), I stepped away from the lectern, turned to my notes, and told them how to format documents.
It was twenty minutes long, and I used their tutorial from last week for examples of every point I had to make. Apart from that one example harking back to their activity, though, I lost them for the lecture. They zoned out, and I could see it happen. I didn't get panicky or anything -- and I certainly didn't get offended or deeply disappointed -- but it was a little sad to see that happen when I'd spent so much of the last two class periods engaging them.
Still, lesson learned. I'm not exactly sure how I'll address it in the future, but at the very worst, it was just a lecture. The sort of boring lecture every one of them has been through hundreds of times, in dozens of other classes. That's not something I'm going to beat myself up over.
Names
I ended the lecture at 2:12, and started to dismiss them before I realized I hadn't returned their marked-up assignments from last week. Then I said, "Look, I'm terrible with names. I've tried to learn all of yours, but just in case, I'm going to call them out as I hand out your letters." And I did, and they dutifully raised their hands, but I realized pretty quickly I needn't have done that. I knew them all. That's something I'd been worried about, and I managed to get them all down with about ten minutes' effort today, using their student ID photos and the Introduction Letters they'd turned in as their assignments last week.
So that was a positive experience. Really, the whole class was. Another great week. And, not only that, but a source of real confidence. Because now I know last week's success wasn't because of the material, or because of the activity, but because of the method. I repeated the same method to design my class this week, and it went pretty much the same way. That's good news for future efforts.
Awesome. Awesome.
More next week.
Video Lectures
I got to class about ten minutes early today, and spent that time setting up my laptop while the students filed in. I turned on the projector and got it ready to go, but I didn't hook anything up yet because I didn't want the distraction.
While I was getting that ready, though, one of my students spoke up from the back of the room and said, "Oh, hey, I tried to watch your video lecture online, but it wouldn't work on my computer." It's a class full of Computer Science and Information Science majors, so of course suggestions were offered back and forth, but in the end I told him I'd been having trouble with it, too, so I'd keep looking into it and get back to him.
He said, "Well, anyway, it's a good thing you also provided the written transcript. Keep doing that. Because that was really helpful."
And I said, "Umm...I'm a Technical Writer. That's my job. So, yes, I will."
Opening Questions
Five minutes later I had all the students I was going to have (two shy of a full roster), so I turned to my outline. The first item on it was, "Video lecture vs. written tutorial." Half of the class had already heard the conversation, but I went ahead and revisited it, bringing the other half in. Turned out only two or three students had tried to use the video lecture, and only one of them had gotten it to work (and that one happens to work for the North Institute which is the non-profit group that designed and maintains the software all the rest of us are having trouble with). I promised the students I'd keep working on it, and let them know what I learned, and reiterated that the text tutorials will be available, and will be higher quality than my narrated slideshows anyway.
Partway through that, my helpful inside man piped up to tell me how to workaround the problems the others were having, and I made notes to myself to send out more detailed, step-by-step instructions later in the week. So my video lectures problem might be solved. We'll see.
Syllabus Issues
I moved on from there to a discussion of the syllabus, which I opened up on the projector. We'd gone over it on the first day, briefly, but when we talked last week about due dates, I realized it was completely messed up. So I told them the new dates were available on the version of the syllabus online (and went over them in class).
I'd also forgotten to give them Fall Break -- a fact which came to my attention while rearranging due dates, so I told them, "Oh. I've also graciously decided to let you to take Fall Break along with your fellow students." That got a bigger laugh than it probably deserved, and then spawned some contention over one of the new due dates falling on Fall Break. Apparently they're not happy with just getting out of a lecture and assignment. I told them I'd consider the issue and render my verdict next week.
Stand-up
One unexpected development in today's class is that I stood up for most of my lecture(s). I'd decided after my first week that standing in front of the class was causing me anxiety issues (and then later Dad explained to me what was really causing it, but I didn't think to correct my earlier assumption). Anyway, after that I decided to just sit at the teacher's desk -- front and center in the class -- and deliver my lectures on eye-level with all my students.
Today, though, I was using my laptop on the overhead projector, which means I had to set it on the raised lectern off to the side, and I had to stand behind it to control the screen. I had been doing that while we discussed the syllabus -- effectively hiding behind my laptop, which is precisely how I handle the anxiety at most family functions -- but when I moved on to the mini-lecture I didn't have any overhead material to back it up (at first).
So, without thinking about it, I stepped away from the computer, halfway between the lectern and my desk, and started talking to my students. It didn't make sense to cross all the way to my desk, sit down and talk to them, just to jump up again two bullet points down so I could bring up my illustrations.
About midway between the first and second bullet point I noticed that I was standing up and lecturing, but I didn't let myself dwell on it. When it came time for the big ugly main lecture at the end of the class period, though, I did the same thing deliberately, and I had no trouble with it. At least, not with the standing up part.
The Mini-Lecture
As I may have mentioned before, the course consists of Tuesday lectures on Topics in Tech Writing, and then Thursday tutorials and assignments that require the students to prepare specific document types (business letter, memo, resume, that sort of thing).
So today I brought that up -- brought up that we'd been talking for two weeks about "document types," and I said the reason that matters is because certain document types have an impact just by being that document type. In fact, I'd hinted at that in the tutorials for each of the documents types they'd done so far. Formatting a business communique as a recognizable Business Letter creates a certain expectation and context for your reader, before you ever convey the first word of your content. The same goes for a memo. I told them a good way to think of document types is by their "shape" -- that is, the visual impact of a document that matches a particular style, and the response that style creates in a reader.
Haiku?
By way of illustration, I put some words up on the projector. It was a text document, in Notepad, so there was no formatting whatsoever. I'd even reduced everything to lower-case, at great personal pain. The first document looked like this:
schumann's resonanceI said, "Anyone know what this is?"
headgear for grasshoppers
eyes like headlights
friday
october 5
9:00 pm
p. j.'s
manhattan
One of my Computer Science majors said, "A haiku?" I almost laughed at that. I'd actually had, "Gibberish? A poem?" in my own notes for possible student guesses.
I just said, "What about this?" and opened the second document.
the jackpot
10:00 pm
$5.00
eyes like headlights
daleria
the remember
january 5, 2008
Somebody said, "An advertisement, maybe?" I heard whispery voices treading dangerously close to the right guess, so I went ahead and put up the third document.
www.myspace.com/eyeslikeheadlightsThat third line gave it away, and I said, "What I've got here is the text from a bunch of band flyers. That first one looked like complete nonsense when I showed you just the unformatted words, but you'd recognize the information instantly if I showed you this."
eyes like headlights
cd release party
debut album
there's no us in evolution
5909 johnson drive
mission, kansas
with left on northwood and rettig
friday, october 26
the mission theatre
all ages 21 to drink
"So," I said, "what you can see here is that the words that go on a band flyer are totally meaningless until you put them in the shape of a band flyer." And I hesitated for a beat, and smiled, and said, "So you're going to put them in the shape of band flyer."The Band Flyer
I told them to divide into three groups -- that I wasn't playing the elementary school counting game this week -- and none of them apparently learned from that last week because they opted to just stay divided up by their tables. So group one consisted of three English majors and a couple technical people, and then groups two and three were entirely technical people. It was incredibly lopsided, but it made for good teaching in the end.
I told them they could probably find the original flyer if they looked hard enough online, but that I didn't want them to recreate the original. I wanted them to make their own. Each group quickly picked which software they were going to use to design the document (Picnic, Paint, and Word, respectively), and then selected one designer to actually build it.
Groups two and three mostly left their designers to do the design work single-handedly, while they went searching online -- first for suitable background art, and then (out of sheer, perverse curiosity) for sordid details about the band Eyes Like Headlights (which, in case you're curious, is one of Carlos's old bands).
Time Management
I probably should have obfuscated my information before presenting it to the students. Some of the antics and lyrics associated with Eyes Like Headlights probably isn't something I should be sharing with my students -- at least from the Dean of Students's point of view. They certainly didn't mind. They found it hilarious.
I gave them twenty minutes, and group two dashed something off in Paint and were done in fifteen minutes (and that was just the designer -- most of the rest of his group had tuned out around seven to eight minutes in, when they were confident in his work). Group three's designer had a little more artistic input, and they took right up until the twenty-minute mark to submit their design. Group one, which boasted fully four designers overflowing with artistic vision, took most of thirty minutes to get their document submitted.
Sometime around minute twenty-seven, one of the girls looked up and said, "Wait, what kind of band are they?"
Everyone else already knew, because they'd been listening to tracks on myspace, but I looked at my cherished English major and said, "They're progressive death metal."
Her eyes shot wide, and she said, "Umm...well, we're pretending that they're Folk, for ours. Okay?"
Presentation and Discussion
So we finally got all three flyers in, and I put them up on the projector in order. Everyone was really impressed with group one's heavily designed document, and no amount of prompting could get them to express what was wrong with it (apart from a couple elements that they'd forgotten). I had to point out that they got the band wrong. That, while they'd been determinedly working on the good design, good layout, good formatting that group two had just casually dashed off, group two had actually (goofing off) figured out what style the document should be. That's research, and that's a real, important part of Technical Writing.
Of course, the other groups caught on that group one's flyer was beautifully designed. Ultimately, we decided group three had the best one for the band in question.
Object Lesson
One of the best lessons learned, though, came from a specific mistake the hasty group two had made. One of the lines on the poster, "with left on northwood and rettig," referred to a couple other bands that were performing at the same show. Group two mistook that "left on northwood" bit as directions, and threw that line in the upper left corner with the address and the name of the venue. Same font, same style, and as soon as I put the flyer up on the overhead, someone from group three pointed out their mistake.
Honestly, when we got into the discussion stage, the designer for group two started looking a little sheepish, and I felt a little bad about that. Then we finished up the discussion and I launched into my big ugly lecture, where I was just trying to dump specific formatting rules on them.
One of the first points I made was that technical documents generally contain several discrete chunks of information, bundled together, and part of the purpose of formatting is to create a recognizable hierarchy to help readers quickly and accurately figure out which information belongs to which bundle, and to locate the bundle the reader actually needs.
And I'd said some words on the topic, then I pulled that group two flyer back up, and darted over to the screen, and said, "That's what we saw right here. That's what the flyers do, grouping all these individual sentences into sections, formatting them to show what is related, and how. And we saw that on this flyer. We all knew instantly that group two had gotten this wrong -- had mistaken these two other bands for driving directions -- because of nothing but the font and the position on the page. He grouped this line with these other lines, and that told us what he thought it meant."
That was an excellent object lesson, that I could never have made up on my own. Even more importantly, though, the guy who had designed that document, who had been looking sheepish through all the ribbing over it, was nodding right along to my point. He got it, and that was awesome.
The Big Ugly Lecture
Dad told me not to do lectures -- to focus on mini-lectures instead -- and Gail said I'd done really well in the first week to focus on stories because students really connect to stories (and that's great news, because I'm naturally a storyteller).
But in today's class I needed to do an infodump. I needed to deliver certain rules, certain information, for them to use in all future classes. So after we'd finished our discussion of the class activity (which, I think, they really enjoyed), I stepped away from the lectern, turned to my notes, and told them how to format documents.
It was twenty minutes long, and I used their tutorial from last week for examples of every point I had to make. Apart from that one example harking back to their activity, though, I lost them for the lecture. They zoned out, and I could see it happen. I didn't get panicky or anything -- and I certainly didn't get offended or deeply disappointed -- but it was a little sad to see that happen when I'd spent so much of the last two class periods engaging them.
Still, lesson learned. I'm not exactly sure how I'll address it in the future, but at the very worst, it was just a lecture. The sort of boring lecture every one of them has been through hundreds of times, in dozens of other classes. That's not something I'm going to beat myself up over.
Names
I ended the lecture at 2:12, and started to dismiss them before I realized I hadn't returned their marked-up assignments from last week. Then I said, "Look, I'm terrible with names. I've tried to learn all of yours, but just in case, I'm going to call them out as I hand out your letters." And I did, and they dutifully raised their hands, but I realized pretty quickly I needn't have done that. I knew them all. That's something I'd been worried about, and I managed to get them all down with about ten minutes' effort today, using their student ID photos and the Introduction Letters they'd turned in as their assignments last week.
So that was a positive experience. Really, the whole class was. Another great week. And, not only that, but a source of real confidence. Because now I know last week's success wasn't because of the material, or because of the activity, but because of the method. I repeated the same method to design my class this week, and it went pretty much the same way. That's good news for future efforts.
Awesome. Awesome.
More next week.
Journal Entry: September 15, 2009
Yesterday sucked.
I mean, actually, I had a pretty pleasant chat with Julie, and one with N--, too. That was nice. And I got a call from B-- that was news-packed, and at least half of it was good! That was nice.
But really I wasted most of the day (and significant parts of each of those conversations) feeling sick about my class today. I've got to get over that.
On the drive home from work, I cranked up some inspirational music, and made plans to work out when I got home. AB wanted to play with her daddy, though, and that wasn't something I could turn down. So we talked and read a book and watched TV for a while.
Then D-- brought over leftover brisket from last Saturday's birthday party. T-- made up some homemade mashed potatoes for a side, and it was a phenomenal dinner. After that I moved to the couch and played WoW for three hours, hoping to distract myself. It didn't really work, but I got a lot done in WoW. We also watched a new Leverage and a new Psych, both of which were great.
Then around ten D-- went home, and I went to the office to do a little more prep work for my class. I spent about half an hour on that, then headed to bed.
And lay there. And did not fall asleep. My mind was racing, fixated on class and everything that could go wrong.
So after about half an hour of that I jumped up and went back to the office. I read through all my students' business letters again, I watched Gail Nash's online lecture on document layout and design again, I reworked my class notes extensively, and I prepped some exercise materials for class today. All told, it was well after midnight when I went back to bed.
And lay there. And did not fall asleep. I wasn't really worried by that point -- over the course of that last hour in the office, I'd completely worked through every minute of today's class, and I knew I was thoroughly prepared. I'd go so far as to say scripted. But I couldn't stop thinking about it -- about which words to put with certain ideas, which ideas to cut if I ran out of time, and which ones to abbreviate, what sections of the discussion could (and should) be moved around and where, whether I'd captured all the necessary changes to the syllabus, and how to get that information across clearly.
Not just that, but I also found myself cutting material from today's lecture and moving it forward to future lectures, and when I was working on how to adapt that material to the other lecture's topic, I started working on those lectures, building them up. It was all useful work, but not at one thirty in the morning.
By that point, I wasn't worrying about today's class anymore. I was just wishing I could go ahead and give the class so I could get on with my life. Instead, I kept on obsessing.
I knew it, too. I kept trying to put it away, to stop thinking about it, and I kept failing at that. At two o'clock, AB cried out in her sleep and I went to check on her, thinking she'd woken up. At three, frustrated, I sat up in bed just to see how late it really was, and then lay back down. My alarm went off at seven, and I was already awake, but I got up and turned it off and went back to bed. Not to sleep, just to get a few more minutes of rest. Soon enough AB came to jump on the bed, and T-- was getting ready to leave for a doctor's appointment, and I was late enough for work that I couldn't justify waiting any longer. So I got up, and I went to work.
I'll let you guess what I've been thinking about all morning.
Other than that, though, it's just things and stuff.
I mean, actually, I had a pretty pleasant chat with Julie, and one with N--, too. That was nice. And I got a call from B-- that was news-packed, and at least half of it was good! That was nice.
But really I wasted most of the day (and significant parts of each of those conversations) feeling sick about my class today. I've got to get over that.
On the drive home from work, I cranked up some inspirational music, and made plans to work out when I got home. AB wanted to play with her daddy, though, and that wasn't something I could turn down. So we talked and read a book and watched TV for a while.
Then D-- brought over leftover brisket from last Saturday's birthday party. T-- made up some homemade mashed potatoes for a side, and it was a phenomenal dinner. After that I moved to the couch and played WoW for three hours, hoping to distract myself. It didn't really work, but I got a lot done in WoW. We also watched a new Leverage and a new Psych, both of which were great.
Then around ten D-- went home, and I went to the office to do a little more prep work for my class. I spent about half an hour on that, then headed to bed.
And lay there. And did not fall asleep. My mind was racing, fixated on class and everything that could go wrong.
So after about half an hour of that I jumped up and went back to the office. I read through all my students' business letters again, I watched Gail Nash's online lecture on document layout and design again, I reworked my class notes extensively, and I prepped some exercise materials for class today. All told, it was well after midnight when I went back to bed.
And lay there. And did not fall asleep. I wasn't really worried by that point -- over the course of that last hour in the office, I'd completely worked through every minute of today's class, and I knew I was thoroughly prepared. I'd go so far as to say scripted. But I couldn't stop thinking about it -- about which words to put with certain ideas, which ideas to cut if I ran out of time, and which ones to abbreviate, what sections of the discussion could (and should) be moved around and where, whether I'd captured all the necessary changes to the syllabus, and how to get that information across clearly.
Not just that, but I also found myself cutting material from today's lecture and moving it forward to future lectures, and when I was working on how to adapt that material to the other lecture's topic, I started working on those lectures, building them up. It was all useful work, but not at one thirty in the morning.
By that point, I wasn't worrying about today's class anymore. I was just wishing I could go ahead and give the class so I could get on with my life. Instead, I kept on obsessing.
I knew it, too. I kept trying to put it away, to stop thinking about it, and I kept failing at that. At two o'clock, AB cried out in her sleep and I went to check on her, thinking she'd woken up. At three, frustrated, I sat up in bed just to see how late it really was, and then lay back down. My alarm went off at seven, and I was already awake, but I got up and turned it off and went back to bed. Not to sleep, just to get a few more minutes of rest. Soon enough AB came to jump on the bed, and T-- was getting ready to leave for a doctor's appointment, and I was late enough for work that I couldn't justify waiting any longer. So I got up, and I went to work.
I'll let you guess what I've been thinking about all morning.
Other than that, though, it's just things and stuff.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Journal Entry: September 14, 2009
Friday
Friday night T--'s parents came in from Wichita, and after unloading the newly refurbished dining table and chairs that John had brought down, we took them out to dinner at Mama Roja (of course). It was delicious. Other than that, it was just WoW.
Saturday
Saturday around noon we went to Mayfair Church of Christ for D--'s grandma's birthday party. It was about forty people, mostly D--'s family, and only a couple people I knew, but for some reason (and completely unexpectedly) that place hit my social anxiety something awful. We were there for two hours. The brisket was good.
Afterward we went home, and brought my niece Lola with us. We watched her for a couple hours, then when my sister came to pick her up, T-- and her family went up to Hobby Lobby for some fabric shopping.
John and I had talked about going out to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner to catch the OU game (since it was only showing on pay per view), but I still felt bad from the afternoon's activity so I stayed home and made us all chili instead. Then I played WoW for the rest of the night while John watched the race and the rest of us watched an episode of Lie to Me.
Sunday
Sunday morning I skipped church, and spent some time coming up with a list of adjectives to describe little Alexander. That...didn't turn out to be useful. I had fun with it, though.
T-- made barbecue sandwiches for lunch, then she and her parents headed to my sister's place for a baby shower while my brother-in-law brought his two girls over to play. They watched Word World with AB while Jeff and I talked for an hour or so. Then I took AB up to the shower.
Now, T-- had told me she wasn't expecting much of a turnout at the shower, since all of my family had all canceled and several of the ladies from church had said they wouldn't be there. So I was somewhat astonished to walk into my sister's house and find it packed full of people.
They had brought so many gifts, and while I was there the guests read out blessings for Alexander and T-- and me, that they'd written earlier. That was precious.
Afterward, we came home and said goodbyes to T--'s parents, then I played WoW and waited for D-- to become available. He called around six, and we both headed up to Edmond to watch the Cowboys game with K-- and N--.
It was an excellent game. I left at half time so I could watch some of the game with T-- (who'd been too exhausted to go with me). We enjoyed that so much that we watched the end of the Bears / Packers game, too.
Sort of an erratic weekend, and exhausting, but a lot of fun. And, y'know, the Cowboys won. Awesome.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Friday night T--'s parents came in from Wichita, and after unloading the newly refurbished dining table and chairs that John had brought down, we took them out to dinner at Mama Roja (of course). It was delicious. Other than that, it was just WoW.
Saturday
Saturday around noon we went to Mayfair Church of Christ for D--'s grandma's birthday party. It was about forty people, mostly D--'s family, and only a couple people I knew, but for some reason (and completely unexpectedly) that place hit my social anxiety something awful. We were there for two hours. The brisket was good.
Afterward we went home, and brought my niece Lola with us. We watched her for a couple hours, then when my sister came to pick her up, T-- and her family went up to Hobby Lobby for some fabric shopping.
John and I had talked about going out to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner to catch the OU game (since it was only showing on pay per view), but I still felt bad from the afternoon's activity so I stayed home and made us all chili instead. Then I played WoW for the rest of the night while John watched the race and the rest of us watched an episode of Lie to Me.
Sunday
Sunday morning I skipped church, and spent some time coming up with a list of adjectives to describe little Alexander. That...didn't turn out to be useful. I had fun with it, though.
T-- made barbecue sandwiches for lunch, then she and her parents headed to my sister's place for a baby shower while my brother-in-law brought his two girls over to play. They watched Word World with AB while Jeff and I talked for an hour or so. Then I took AB up to the shower.
Now, T-- had told me she wasn't expecting much of a turnout at the shower, since all of my family had all canceled and several of the ladies from church had said they wouldn't be there. So I was somewhat astonished to walk into my sister's house and find it packed full of people.
They had brought so many gifts, and while I was there the guests read out blessings for Alexander and T-- and me, that they'd written earlier. That was precious.
Afterward, we came home and said goodbyes to T--'s parents, then I played WoW and waited for D-- to become available. He called around six, and we both headed up to Edmond to watch the Cowboys game with K-- and N--.
It was an excellent game. I left at half time so I could watch some of the game with T-- (who'd been too exhausted to go with me). We enjoyed that so much that we watched the end of the Bears / Packers game, too.
Sort of an erratic weekend, and exhausting, but a lot of fun. And, y'know, the Cowboys won. Awesome.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
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